Monday, September 14, 2009

TIIFF 2009: Giulia non esce la sera

The director Piccione spoke briefly at the beginning of the film and said that it may surprise the audience but he is considered a sex symbol in Italy (considering his Jean-Luc Godard visage - yes).

I knew nothing of this film and am at a loss as to why it does not work for me. Is it possible that it is because we have two main characters, Giulia (Valeria Golino) and Guido (ValerioMastandrea), equally unhappy (one more so, deservedly) whose lives do not foretell any possibility of happiness or improvement in their circumstances at the end?

Giulia works as a swimming instructor by day. By night, she returns to a prison for women for having killed her lover who had threatened to leave her. That seems an odd arrangement but, hey, I'm not a lawyer. She leaves behind a husband and a young daughter who cannot forgive her for the notoriety the family faced after the murder. The only access the mother has is stolen glimpses of the girl that she spies on in public. She is obsessed with her daughter and this consumes her life.

Guido is a successful literary author up for the prestigious Malaspina Award in Italy. He is also married and bored, or disillusioned, with his spouse (Sonia Bergamasco, the female lead in The Best of Youth from a few years ago). It is unclear why - she is attractive, intelligent, charming, a good mother - could it be, Guido, because she has not read your latest book? I see no discernible reason for his distaste. Even his broodingly dark good looks cannot generate much sympathy in me for Guido even though he seems a kind, thoughtful man.

They meet when Giulia teaches Guido's daughter to swim. An affair ensues but Giulia is predictably tortured ... moody, passionate, angry ... perhaps this is more attractive than the "normal" wife which is something that his wife hints at. Guido is tender and thoughtful with Giulia but she is too far gone, too unhappy to be "saved" by a white knight.

The film does capture the petty jealousies between writers very well, the barely concealed dislike of one's rivals, the eagerness for prizes and recognition that one must conceal in order to seem a serious, respected writer in the service of art. The anxiety about producing worthwhile art.

There are also some lovely Felliniesqueimages here where the author imagines the characters in his short stories (a girl in an umbrella store floating underwater, a lap dancer with a crush on a priest in the pool where he now swims) but these are too fleeting and infrequent and feel at odds with the rest of the tone of the film

It ends very badly for Giulia and not so well for Guido either and we have learned what ... One shouldn't kill one's lover? An artist shouldn't covet prizes or other women?

Minor TIFF of the Day: This is director Giuseppe Piccione's first time at TIFF. He was invited in 2001 but in the wake of the 9-11 tragedy he was unable catch a flight and to attend the festival.

Michelle Alfano featured in ...

MIchelle Alfano featured in ...

Made Up of Arias by Michelle Alfano

Praise for ...

Michelle Alfano's Made Up of Arias beautifully evokes an immigrant childhood lived against the backdrop of opera, which stands in for all that her characters have lost or will never attain even while it speaks to the most common and everyday of their tragedies and joys. Alfano writes with the humour and compassion of someone who not only understands her characters, but forgives them.

Nino Ricci, Governor General Award winning author of The Origin of Species and Lives of the Saints

As a writer, Michelle Alfano has it all. Her narratives are beguiling and true and populated by vivid, convincing characters. She has a mastery of metaphor, each one is effective. I can’t say enough about her prose; it is sensuous and crystalline, intelligent and insightful. I have read her novellaMade Up of Arias three times. It stood up under the multiple readings. Each time I was both entertained and moved.

Caterina Edwards, Finding Rosa: A Mother with Alzheimer's, a Daughter in Search of the Past

Cultural observer and literary editor Michelle Alfano’s A Lit Chick blog is sharp, funny and thoughtful; her Bressani Award-winning novella,Made Up Of Arias, shows another side of this talented writer. In a story as operatic as the central metaphor in the lives of the Pentangeli family, whose mother sings arias from the rooftop and children act out dramas in front of a billboard on Paradise Street, this novella explores the tragedy and comedy of everyday life, with grace notes that beautifully evoke both postwar Sicily and a working class Ontario neighbourhood of the nineteen-seventies. Highly recommended.

Terri Favro, The Proxy Bride (Quattro Books, 2012)

Made Up of Arias is all the voices of childhood, all the stories that allow a child's imagination to safely try on adult themes. Alfano is a keen observer, with an eye for detail and a gift for humour. ... This charming story is well worth reading.

Julie Booker, Partners, ICCT, Spring 2009

Made Up of Arias is an important and welcome addition to the tradition of Italian-Canadian literary voices. [Michelle Alfano] is also an outstanding writer whose fiction carves a distinct place in Canada’s national narrative. Beautifully observed, richly comic, heartbreaking and compelling, Made up of Arias, deserves to be read by a broad audience as well as specialists. Lilia Topouzova, Italian Canadiana,December, 2009

In her novella,Made Up of Arias, writer Michelle Alfano speaks in the beautifully compelling, yet remarkably guileless voice of her protagonist and narrator, Lilla Pentangeli ... Michelle Alfano’s mastery of English and Italian, her knowledge of opera, and her ability to elevate the ordinary, are inspiring and transforming.

I laughed out loud and cried too as I read this wonderful novella...There is such joy in this family, and there is such sorrow too…and Michelle Alfano evokes all of that with her stunning prose and her ability to make us see and grow to love this family, and just like in an opera, we also get to see ourselves.

Rachel Guido deVries, VIA – Voices in Italian Americana, Fall 2012

Michelle Alfano’s [Made Up of Arias] is a colourful, beautiful and fascinating story of the Pentangeli family immigrating to Canada …

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Who is A Lit Chick?

The (Not So) Nice Italian Girls & Friends were formed in 2009 to promote the work of Italo-Canadian writers and to create a dialogue with writers of all backgrounds, orientations and ethnicities. A Lit Chick (Michelle Alfano) is a co-founder of the series.

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Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

Who if not you ... will stand fast against overwhelming odds, will break a lance for justice? Are you not ashamed that we old men are the ones who have become impassioned? That the generous madness of youth has inspired not you but your elders?Emile Zola, Le Figaro, December 1, 1897